Re: Hiding one's email source username/hostname/ISP

[Bob Carragher]

On Wed, 10 Mar 2021 08:39:18 -0500 Jerry Heyman <jerry@hobbeshollow.com> sez:

> On Wed, 10 Mar 2021 06:53:34 -0500, David Levine <levinedl@acm.org> wrote:
>
> > Bob wrote:
> > 
> > > I do see in the headers of your reply that the first "Received:"
> > > header uses "HiddenHostname" ... but also the FQDM(?) of your

Oops, that should've been FQD_N_.  B-)

> > > Verizon connection
> > 
> > FQDN, in this case for a dynamically assigned address so not
> > very useful to anyone other than Verizon.  Though they choose
> > to provide a geographic hint, and "fios", in the name.

Right.  I was hopeful that even that could be hidden.  For
example, if I use the Gmail web interface, the Received: headers
indicate that it came from Gmail itself (which makes sense).  I
was thinking it'd be useful to replicate that, even when I'm
actually sending it from my laptop _via_ the Gmail servers.

But:

> > > So, while I could hide the hostname of my laptop, I wouldn't be
> > > able to hide its "public"/ISP-assigned name (and IP address).
> > 
> > Right, as Tom noted:
> > 
> >     Received: lines are generally added by each MTA that the message
> >     passes through.  In this case it was smtp.gmail.com that added that;
> >     it's not under your control.  You can probably modify the "Hikaru"
>
> Not sure this is helpful, but for years I've hidden my actual
> host I send mail from which is
>
> unix.hobbeshollow.com
>
> by putting the following entries in my mts.conf
>
> localname: hobbeshollow.com
> masquerade: draft_from mmailid username_extension
>
> This allows me to send email as jerry@hobbeshollow.com.
> hobbeshollow.com is my domain.
> I pay a 3rd party to connect for my outbound mail from
> hobbeshollow.com a nominal fee annually because ATT turned off
> that capability about 18 months ago.
>
> > David
> > 
> > https://lists.nongnu.org/archive/html/nmh-workers/2021-03/msg00012.html
> > 
>
> jerry
> -- 
>      // Jerry Heyman               | The first law of economics is scarcity of
>     //  Amigan Forever :-)         | resources.  First law of politics, ignore
> \\ //   heymanj at acm dot org     | the first law of economics
>  \X/                               | -- Thomas Sowell



On Wed, 10 Mar 2021 12:10:18 -0500 Jerry Heyman <jerry@hobbeshollow.com> sez:

> On Wed, 10 Mar 2021 11:34:21 -0500, Ken Hornstein <kenh@pobox.com> wrote:
>
> > >by putting the following entries in my mts.conf
> > >
> > >localname: hobbeshollow.com
> > >masquerade: draft_from mmailid username_extension
> > 
> > Just FYI ... we got rid of all masquerade support ... 9 years
> > ago?  Definitely in nmh 1.4.  Now, we didn't get rid of the
> > FUNCTIONALITY.  Basically there were all these bizarre rules
> > around setting your "From" header that you could use the
> > masquerade entry to relax and we finally agreed that was
> > dumb, so we got rid of them and you can set your From header
> > to anything now.  That line isn't harming anything, but you
> > can safely remove it if your nmh is reasonably up to date.
>
> Ken,
>
> My nmh is 1.7, so reasonably current :-)
>
> Since I created during the nmh/mh early days, I've not noticed
> the masquerade support was incorporated.  the mts.conf file had
> served me well for all these years, and I just migrate the same
> one from upgrade to upgrade.  Since no longer necessary, I'll
> remove it!

(If it helps, my NMH is also version 1.7.)

I use the "clientname" option because otherwise it is set to
"localhost.localdomain" (since I don't use "localname"), and that
has been shown to be a huge red spam flag.

But, I think I should not use the "localname" option.

If I correctly understand the implication of using it --
specifically, "the hostname nmh considers local" -- then I think
this would be problematic, as the alternative "local hostname"
I'd want to specify would be "gmail.com."  But then, any time I
email "foo@gmail.com," NMH would try to deliver that locally
instead of sending it to the Gmail server, no?  That'd result in
100% bounces, since not even my own Gmail username, "dnc2dnc," is
a valid login ID on my laptop.  I suppose "bob@gmail.com" would
work, except I don't know them and so don't email them except by
accident.  B-)

                                Bob

> Thanks!
>
> jerry
>
> > 
> > The use of localname is fine; there are other ways to
> > accomplish that, but that's certainly one way of doing it.
> > 
> > --Ken
> > 
>
>
> -- 
>      // Jerry Heyman               | The first law of economics is scarcity of
>     //  Amigan Forever :-)         | resources.  First law of politics, ignore
> \\ //   heymanj at acm dot org     | the first law of economics
>  \X/                               | -- Thomas Sowell